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National Employment Standards (NES)

The national employment Standards (NES) contain ten minimum employment entitlements that are provided to employees in Australia. NES covers all employees within the national workplace relations system regardless of the employment contract, award or registered agreements (Creighton, 2011). This work focusses on two of the ten minimum standards, namely annual leave and maximum weekly hours. Specifically, this work explains how these entitlements protects workers.

Annual Leave

An annual leave is also called holiday and it allows employees to receive salaries while having their time-off from work. All employees, except for the casual workers, are entitled to a paid annual leave. Based on the official working hours, both part time and full-time employees get four weeks as annual leave (Creighton, 2011). Employees get significant protection from this entitlement in terms of its benefits. The first protection that employees get from the entitlement is reduction in stress levels. In many cases, work-related stress can lead to high blood pressure, reduced work performance, increased anxiety, drinking, depression and headache (Allen et al., 2014). The use of paid holidays thus help to eliminate the stress that employees experience while at work.

The annual leave also lead to improved mood of the workers. According to Allen et al. (2014), women who take holidays at least twice a year are less depressed, tired or tense. As the frequency of vocation decreases, the rate of depression increases. The annual leave also lead to better social life of the worker. Medical research indicate that women and men who take regular holidays have happier relationships (Allen et al., 2014). Similarly, women who take frequent vacations are more satisfied with their marriages and improved socialization with other family members.

Maximum Weekly Hour

NES sets maximum weekly hours for a full-time employee at 38 hours. Similarly, NES sets the maximum weekly working hours for part-time employees to be lesser than 38 hours or less than the ordinary working hours of employee (Creighton, 2011). The set maximum weekly hours incorporates paid or unpaid leave authorized by the employer. This entitlement has significant importance to employees. First, the law protects employees from exploitation by their employers. If an employer wants the employee to work beyond the set limit, then additional payment must be allocated to the worker.

Furthermore, the law helps to improve the health and wellbeing of the employees. Research indicate that working longer hours is associated with fatigue, cardiovascular disease, negative physical and mental health (Pencavel, 2014). This is because working longer than the set limit leads to poor work-life balance. Using the law helps to limit the health risks that a worker is exposed to. For instance, when the duration of working per day is maintained at eight hours, an employee will have reduced occupational diseases related to dust, noise, heat and unsafe machines (Pencavel, 2014).